Rob Lowe flashbacked to his life at 17 while auditioning for “The Outsiders.” Before a New York tryout, he shared a room at the Plaza with a “robotic” Tom Cruise whom he said had a “bloodless focus, an intensity that I’ve never encountered before.” He tells Vanity Fair’s April issue, “Cruise is on the phone with his agent, Paula Wagner. ‘Paula, they are making us share‘ . . . The rest of us are staggering around like happy goofs . . . ‘Thank you very much,’ [Cruise] says like a 50-year-old businessman.” Lowe also says, of hanging out with Charlie Sheen in the late ’80s, that he was “a wonderful mix of nerd . . . and rebel . . . We competed to see who could play harder, then show up for work and still kick ass . . the verdict: Charlie by a nose.”